WARNING: extremely disturbing photo of Kelly Thomas in his hospital bed. The D.A. isn’t finding any evidence the cops intentionally beat him to death, and legally I’m sure that’s true, and that actually makes it worse to me. Because for 6 trained officers could not misjudge the force they’re using against a single man that badly: this is an example of crowd psychology, one of the least understood functions of human sociology.

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The London riots are basically nothing but racefail. It’s pretty sickening, both in the causes of the riots and the commentary they’re receiving.

The “surprise wedding” makes my skin crawl. And it also illustrates to me how influential your family/friends network is. That’s one of the big safety nets for escaping abusive relationships, and now it’s very apparent how it can be used to help trap you in one.

I…ech. If that had been me, I’d have said no just on principle, even had I said yes earlier, then ditched all my friends and fanily and moved to Hobart. Or Caines. As far away from Perth as I could get if THAT was my co-called friends and family. (Not to mention fiancee.) It baffles me that people think that’s romantic, the amount of control and secrecy that went into it.

Most surprise proposal stories creep me out – wasn’t there a link on this site a few months back comparing it to skeezy used-car dealerships or late-night shopping commercials? (“This man can be your husband, for the low, low price of your dignity and autonomy. This unbeatable offer will not be repeated, so order now. Operators are standing by.”) However, that wedding one takes it to a new level. I can’t claim any great comprehesion of relationships, but I’ve long thought that proposals should be delivered in writing, to give time and space to think. However delivered, there must be a genuine choice; thanks for the Roe v. Wade link articulating that subject.

An additional unsettling element – planning a wedding is a rare time when many woman get to make decisions and expect them to stick. Yes, in an ideal world wouldn’t be an exception, but we don’t live in an ideal world. To be denied just one day in your life when your in-laws ask for your opinion is just wrong.

There’s a fine example of a bad proposal in the comic strip ‘Funky Winkerbean’ this week, except for some reason it’s accepted. Author avatar Les Moore takes Cayla for a walk in the park in which he rambles about his first wife, Lisa and her eventual death to cancer. Cayla can’t get a word in edgewise for three entire strips. Then he proposes. Then she suggests he might like to meet her family someday. Funky Winkerbean was once socially progressive, but that era is long gone. For a snarky takedown, see the ‘Son of Stuck Funky’ blog posts before and after this one:http://sonofstuckfunky.com/indecent-proposal

Yes, but also, “…what other medical uses than to prevent pregnancy?” Because like most medicines, the pill has other unrelated applications. Women with PCOS typically can’t have kids, or will need a lot of expensive fertility treatments to conceive, so it’s not even like taking the pill to help our horrific symptoms and/or prevent cancer is preventing a lot of pregnancies that were waiting to happen. But they object to that too, or at least don’t bother to make distinctions about it.

Re: the middle schooler article. Everybody involved with this needs to have their house burgled – no violence, no harm to anyone, just alllll their really valuable stuff stolen, and maybe some of their irreplaceable stuff like old photos annoyingly trashed – and then when they report it to the police, be forced to apologize to the burgler for making up such a thing.

Jennifer Kesler: Yes, but also, “…what other medical uses than to prevent pregnancy?” Because like most medicines, the pill has other unrelated applications. Women with PCOS typically can’t have kids, or will need a lot of expensive fertility treatments to conceive, so it’s not even like taking the pill to help our horrific symptoms and/or prevent cancer is preventing a lot of pregnancies that were waiting to happen. But they object to that too, or at least don’t bother to make distinctions about it.

Naturally. Just like the sole purpose of the HPV vaccine is to encourage pubescent girls to have sex without fear of being righteously punished. It certainly doesn’t have any bearing on cancer.

It’s amazing how there’s all these photos and footage of ethnically mixed rioters, and some very visible white rioters and loads of white people in court for various offences (one for goddamn assault and his mug’s in every reporter about it), and all these people on far-right boards and newspaper comments and a bloody Tory counciller who claimed he was unaware “jungle bunnies” was a racist term have managed to not notice all these white blokes (and girls). Let’s not get started on David Starkey…

Re: this idea that if you teach women how to avoid having babies, the end of humanity is near. To make sense of this idea and some of the others in the conservative mythology, you’d have to believe that women never willingly have sex with men, and if they could avoid having babies, every single one of us would. But this starkly contradicts the idea that we’re all whores and every woman is desperate to have a baby before her “biological clock runs out.”

So that can’t be it. You have to go back a step further and realize: what this comes from is a fundamental raging fury some men feel about wombs being out of their control. I mean, what was God thinking, right? Giving wombs to women, putting control of babies OUTSIDE male power? This is the ONE THING in all of nature that men can’t control through brawn, and some of them just can’t effing stand it! Once I look at it that way, all these seemingly contradictory ideas begin to make sense: one way or another, they desperately need to be in control of what goes on in vaginas and wombs everywhere.

And basically, what they’re doing is trying to rectify what they feel was God’s big mistake. The irony, it burns.

I’ve been thinking about The Help, and I can’t pin down why it’s not obvious to most Americans that someone in a position of servitude doesn’t love you as much as they seem to. Most of white America will work in customer service at some point, after all. You strain your patience with ridiculous customers. You are nice to people (to borrow a Smiths’ line) you’d much rather kick in the eye. You smile when you don’t feel like it, to the point where some brat gets the idea you’d like him to ask you out. If you lose it and get mildly honest with a bad customer, you risk getting fired. Even if you don’t need the job – even if you’re just doing it as a lark – it’s hard to miss how much pressure there is to hide your feelings, and even pretend you’re feeling things you so totally aren’t.

I’m guessing you have to have so thoroughly Othered certain people in your mind already to look at them in positions of servitude and not think they’re probably bored out of their minds and/or wishing they’d never met you when you bring them something particularly complicated or hard to do. Because I know that’s how I felt most of the time in those jobs.

This strikes me as an excellent example of Doublethink in action. My head always hurts when I try to make sense of their argumentation – I gave up. It’s just doubleplusungood. D:

Also, seeing how the world population is hitting 7 billion any time soon I just can’t bring myself to see the downside of women deciding to have less babies. The planet is already so crowded I’d say free contraceptions and planned parenthood for everyone! \o/

SunlessNick,
Me, either. Given how horrendously out of pocket he would be should she had debunked the idea at the eloping stage, not to mention the massive embarressment – dunno which would be worse – I don’t see how ANYONE would go through with it had they actually THOUGHT about how spectacularly it would backfire… which makes me think that he didn’t, in fact, give that part of it any thought at all.

Patrick McGraw, I think that’s it. I think they believe that the chance that using bc pills as a hormone treatment for an unrelated disorder might ALSO result in preventing pregnancy is just Too Important to sacrifice over the lives of some women. Or that we’re making up PCOS as an excuse to get BC pills without admitting we’re just trying to have sex without consequences. Or that everyone would claim to have PCOS, and those nasty abortion doctors would knowingly aid and abet their deception and hand out the pills to non-PCOS women.

I believe this is also what their trouble was with abortion except in cases of rape an incest. Anybody could claim to have been raped, and if you demanded they have a guilty verdict or even a police report to prove it, that left tons of raped women out in the cold. So they’ve worked out a way – in their minds – to justify not even allowing little girls impregnated by their psychopathic fathers to get abortions.

But then, statistically, some of them must be fucking their little daughters and feeling miffed that the world dare tell them anything they want to do is wrong, so maybe I’m giving too much rationalization credit. Maybe it’s just plain self-interest.

I’ve felt that about adults I’ve worked for, but not the kids. I babysat for two summers as a teen, and young kids are very easy to get attached to, very easy to love. And they get attached to you, too. And then you have to leave. It’s heartbreaking.

At least twice in the film. Skeeter asks Abileen what it’s like to raise someone else’s kids while someone else raises yours. Abileen never answers directly, though it’s clear she’s attached to the kid she cares for as part of her job. That question haunts me, because it’s still far too relevant. Kids need to be raised by people who are going to stay in their lives as close to forever as possible, not hired help who will move on at some point.

(And actually, I really enjoyed the social aspect of bussing tables the summer I did that – it got me out of my shell, and the encounters were superficial enough I could manage. It probably helped that I was working at a resort and everyone was in a good mood while on vacation.)